For millions of Pakistanis, the dry taps and parched fields were already a grim reality. Earlier this month, the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) confirmed what communities across Pakistan already knew: canal water shortages in Punjab and Sindh have reached 30%, while groundwater tables in several urban centres are declining faster than they can be replenished. Today, Khanp Dam, a crucial source of irrigation and drinking water, reportedly holds only 25 days’ worth of water. Meanwhile, our fast-deteriorating water resources are being ironically celebrated across the border in India. Ideally, the IRSA warning, largely drowned in other political noise, should have sent alarms through the highest levels of government. It did not, and that silence is louder than ever.
Pakistan has crossed the threshold of water stress and is accelerating toward outright scarcity. Going beyond an academic paper, it notes whether families cook, bathe, grow crops, or migrate. With 90% of Pakistan’s freshwater going to agriculture, even a modest shortfall throws food security into question. Punjab’s canal-fed wheat fields are suffering. Sindh’s rice farmers, short on water and trust, accuse federal authorities of bypassing agreed allocations. In cities like Karachi, entire neighbourhoods live off illegal tankers and groundwater theft. And still, water theft, waste, and inefficiency go largely unchecked.
What we face is a governance collapse, not a climatic surprise. Rainfall fluctuations and glacier melt may accelerate the crisis, but the rot is older and institutional. Pakistan’s irrigation system, designed in the colonial era, leaks away more than a third of the water it carries. Crops like sugarcane and rice are cultivated with impunity, consuming more water per hectare than is sustainable. Groundwater levels in parts of Lahore, Quetta, and Hyderabad are falling by more than a meter per year, yet there is no legal ceiling on extraction.
No national water regulator exists. The 2018 National Water Policy remains largely unimplemented, devolved on paper but paralysed in practice. Meanwhile, provincial water disputes fester in courtrooms and political chambers. Sindh sees federal projects as encroachments, as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remains under-measured and under-reported. The absence of real-time data and hydrological transparency fuels suspicion more than coordination.
The few federal efforts on record, such as the Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams, are riddled with delays and litigation.
What is missing is not information but conviction. Water management is too often relegated to engineers and bureaucrats, as though this were a technical nuisance, not a full-blown national emergency. The government must convene an empowered, transparent, and permanent National Water Council with constitutional cover and cross-party legitimacy. Without such a unified and resolute body, all patchwork solutions are destined to fail. If the state can readily fund bailouts for loss-making entities like PIA, it can, and absolutely must, commit the resources to a comprehensive, long-term national water strategy.
The alternative to immediate water reform is inevitable water conflict. Plain and simple. If there is to be a stable, secure, and sovereign Pakistan in the next 25 years, its very survival will begin and end with water. *